How Nature Works

The Cincinnati Arts Association’s Alice F. and Harris K. Weston Art Gallery in the Aronoff Center for the Arts presents How Nature Works, the first collaborative exhibition by artists Richard Harned and Xan Palay. Both successful artists in their own right, Harned and Palay have focused primarily on national and international-level solo projects and exhibitions. Harned’s multimedia sculptures are meditations on the scientific and mathematical order we live with everyday, while Palay’s sculptures combine animal imagery with familiar constructed forms that explore how our animal nature defines our lives. How Nature Works will feature a suite of independent multimedia installations on both levels of the Weston Art Gallery. Combining materials from Harned’s massive steel and light structures and Palay’s sculpture and video installations, the two will offer their take on the conflict between the rationally ordered universe and the potential chaos that it entails.

Richard Harned and Xan Palay, married for ten years, live and work in Columbus, Ohio. Working side-by-side in the studio, the two share a similar vision of the world, while maintaining a unique approach to their respective works. Harned, a professor of art at The Ohio State University for the past twenty years, is an established regional artist whose works have been featured in exhibitions all over the United States and international group shows in both France and Japan. He received his bachelor’s and master of fine arts degrees from Rhode Island School of Design in Providence, RI. Palay, who received her bachelor of fine arts from The Ohio State University in 1993 and master of fine arts from Bard College, NY, in 2000, has a permanent outdoor installation at the SPACES Gallery in Cleveland, Ohio and has exhibited regionally and nationally for more than ten years. Collectively, the artists have been featured in more than a dozen publications, including calendars, catalogues, art journals, and online publications.